Constructive Conflict: More Than Words

Pastor Robarge’s Sermon

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.

The last couple of weeks, we’ve been looking at this topic of conflict. We’ve looked at avoidance. We’ve looked at triangulation, bringing other people into the argument. We’ve even looked at what is it our past has brought into how we deal with conflict today.

And today’s topic, as we get into this, speaking the truth in love and how do we do that? Well, maybe some of these sound familiar. I looked at the addiction rates across the United States and it just blows my mind how much addiction there is in our world today. Addiction to drugs and alcohol are ones we can plainly see. This subject of addiction probably affects a lot of families in our world today. It’s where a lot of conflict lies. My family is not unlike that. We have an addict in our family and how do we go about constructing this conflict in order to figure out how to best help them? We went about it and said, “Well, we’re going to have to confront this at some point in time.” But then what happens after an incident happens? They come back and they’re remorseful. “Sorry.” Maybe even crying or weeping. So we say, “Now is not the time to address it. Let’s put it off.” But then the next incident happens and the next incident and the next incident. And after each one, you keep thinking, “No, I’m just going to put it off. They’re remorseful. Now they’re weeping. Now they’re crying and maybe they’re at a point where they can see where they can help themselves.” But we continue to put it off until there’s that one period of time when everybody just blows up. Anger, frustration flying around, spitting out hatred. And after you’re done, you say, “They needed to hear the truth. They needed to hear the truth and I’m not sorry about any of it. I’m glad it’s off my chest. There it is.”

What other kind of conflicts? We think about teachers when they give students maybe two weeks to do a big project. So as a parent or even I remember as a child hearing from my parents, “So have you worked on the project? We’re two weeks out. You still have time. Why don’t you spend a little bit of time here, a little bit of time there and put the project together?” It’s good in theory, right? And they say, “Why should I do it now when I have time to do it later?” So what happens? Every couple of days, you remind them. “Hey, have you started on that project?” “No.” “No? You keep putting it off?” So what happens then is the night before comes around and you say, “So where are you on the project?” “I haven’t started it.” So what happened to me as a parent and what happened to my parents when it happened to me is usually they say, “How irresponsible of you! For two weeks now, we’ve been talking about how you’re supposed to do this project, getting it done. And now you’ve blown it. Now you’re not going to put together a good project and now it’s going to be something that’s less than your ability.” So you blow up at them. Anger is flying, frustration but they needed to hear the truth, didn’t they?

Think of a friend, a close friend or a spouse. Is there anything they do that might be annoying to you? Maybe it’s something like a little habit or something like a personality trait that just continues to come in every once in awhile. With spouses, I know you have to have something right there. Right there on the tip of your mind. Just right there because those are the ones we see and we know about. What happens usually? We’re like, “Well, you know, it’s not big enough to say anything. It doesn’t bug me that much.” So we kind of put it off. You say, “We don’t need to address it now.” But then you start to get a little bit more annoyed each time the habit occurs or the trait comes out. But you’re like, “Well, I still don’t think we should share it yet. I don’t think we need to confront this now.” But then what happens later? It happens and you’re finally at that point and you’re like, “Just stop it! Why do you do that?” When my wife usually says it to me, it’s almost like, “What? I didn’t even know there was anything wrong? Why are you so angry?” All that anger and frustration builds up and what does she usually say to me? “Well, you need to hear the truth because it’s going to sound a lot better from me than it would be somebody else.” You need to hear the truth.

As we start looking at this subject, speaking the truth in love, do any of those sound familiar to you? We get to the point where we’re finally just like, “You need to hear the truth and I’m ready to give it to you.” Is that speaking the truth in love? I think you’ve confronted many of these conflicts. People are not free from any conflicts. Everybody has a conflict. But now how is it that we deal with it? Do we say we’re speaking the truth in love?

I think this issue kind of has two sides to it. There are two ways we can look at speaking the truth in love. The first way I think is very prevalent right here in the Christian community especially. It’s the idea that we are Christian and, therefore, we love. That’s who we are. We’re centered in love. We’re all about love, right? And so if we say anything at all, if we say anything that might be taken as somebody might get hurt, somebody might be upset, then we can’t say it at all because we’re about love.

There are some problems with that, too. There are some problems because what it gets to is going back to that first week where we started talking about avoidance, because it doesn’t mean that it goes away. It doesn’t mean that, all of a sudden, something disappears because we’re all about love. So what do we do? We avoid it. We put it on the back burner. We say, “Well, it’s not an issue that I guess we’re supposed to bring up because we’re about love.” So we avoid it. We push it further deeper down inside of us. But just as we looked at that first week, avoidance is not going to take care of the problem. Avoidance is not going to somehow magically take it away just because we are Christians, because we are about love. The problem is still there and it usually is going to lead to that place where someone is going to blow up. Somebody is going to say, “All this anger and frustration, maybe this anxiety that’s occurring in me is just going to blow up.” And where’s that going to end relationships? What’s going to happen to the conflict then? It’s going to be worse. Chances are, more people are going to be hurt. More people are going to be left with the idea that, “Oh, yeah, we’re about love and yet this is how they treat me.”

But there’s the other side also. Speaking the truth in love also can be taken on that other side that we looked at before when it’s just that we need to speak the truth. There’s not really a lot of love concerning it. “This person needs to hear the truth and I’m going to be the one who’s telling them.” We’re concerned then only about the truth and not about love, not about how it’s going to affect somebody or how they’re going to hear it, but it’s all about them needing to hear the truth.

So when the choir comes up later, somebody might say, “They’re in the choir? I sat next to you and I know that you shouldn’t be in the choir because I sing a lot better than you.” Is that what that is? “Well, they need to hear the truth. Someone has to tell them.” Or maybe, “Wow, that dress does make you look fat. Somebody has to tell them because, week after week, they continue to wear the same dress. Somebody has to tell them.” It has nothing to do with that other person, but it has everything to do with what it is you’re trying to get off your own chest. Speaking the truth without having any consequences because then all you have to do is go back and say, “Well, I’m just speaking the truth. I’m just telling it how it is.”

There are a lot of instances in Scripture we can look at as far as what it is that speaking the truth entails, what it looks like. And I think the biggest relationship that I noticed going through and studying these things is the relationship between Jesus and the Pharisees. Now Jesus and the Pharisees often talk similar terms and similar relationships. But they spoke about it differently. Their reasoning for it was different. Let me show you what I mean. When Jesus confronts the Pharisees, this is an incident in the Gospel of Mark where Jesus is with His disciples and they haven’t washed their hands before dinner, very big. This is something parents still yell at their kids for today. But the Pharisees now notice that the disciples haven’t washed their hands and this is what the Pharisees then say to Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to their tradition of the elders instead of eating food with their uncleaned hands?” This is what Jesus said, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites. As it’s written, these people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain. Their teachings are but rules taught by men. You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.” So what Jesus wasn’t saying was, “Yeah, it doesn’t matter about the law. It doesn’t matter about whatever you’re saying.” That’s not what Jesus was saying. What He was getting at is that they have created something and they’ve said, “This is how you need to do it, not because of anything with God.” Did you notice that? They didn’t say, “Well, they’re not washing their hands so they’re not respecting God.” It says, “According to their tradition of the elders.” So there’s no mention of respect towards God. All it is, is they are following in line. “Are they following in line with what we do? How we do it? That’s best. That’s they way they need to. That’s they way they’re going to fall in line. That’s the way they’re going to be saved.” It has nothing to do with God. And so that’s why Jesus confronts them there and He says, “Do you listen? Do you hear the words that are coming out of your mouth? These commands are not from God. They’re from you and you’re making everybody else fall in line with you.”

Jesus talks similarly about the law earlier in the gospel of Matthew. This is what He says concerning the law in Matthew 5:17, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter nor the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless you’re righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” So is He saying it’s wrong for you to teach the law, to teach the commandments? No, He said that’s good. It’s good to uphold the law. But now the Pharisees, they weren’t exactly teaching in connection with all of God’s word. They started to connect a lot of the dots and say, “This is how you do it because this is what you need to do in order to be saved.” But it was important for Jesus then to look at it and say, “That’s not how you’re saved but it is how, when you look at it and you see the law, you’ve noticed that you failed.” Jesus says, “Because the law condemns you, I’m telling you this because I have fulfilled the law. The law was here so I would fulfill it, so when you couldn’t, I did.”

This is what it was, the confrontation with Jesus and the Pharisees, when the Pharisees were looking elsewhere and they were putting these demands on people for the sake of demands. But Jesus said, “Your lips and your hearts are far from God because this is not what He had you do. This is not what He would have you do to be saved.” Look to Him. Look to Jesus and see where salvation lies.

So we can start to see already what happens in this conflict situation. The Pharisees are speaking the truth, but they’re not doing it out of love. They’re doing it so people fall in line. We see Jesus and He speaks the same truth, but He does it so people will have life and salvation through Him. As we start looking at this topic, how is it that we can speak the truth in love? How is it that I know when I am speaking the truth in love and not just something else, not just speaking truth or not just worried about love?

Well, there are three things I want to tell you about this morning. The first one is what you should do is acknowledge the pain. Acknowledge the anxiety that’s found in conflict. That’s the first step because once you acknowledge what’s happening with you and the other person, then you can finally see, “Am I really trying to speak this because I care for them? Am I really doing this because I want a relationship with them?” Because there’s hurt there. There’s pain there. There’s anxiety between those conflicts. “Do I really want it resolved?”

The second one, after we’ve acknowledged the pain, after we’ve acknowledged the pain we have, acknowledge the pain they have. I think what we can do is, secondly, look at our motivation. We’ve seen the two different motivations. We’ve seen that we’re not going to say anything because we’re about love. And we’ve seen the motivation that we’re just going to speak the truth no matter what, no matter who it hurts or who cares about it. They need to hear the truth. So when we’re approaching a conflict, we need to look at that motivation so we’re not just saying, “You know what, I’m reacting out of anger. I’m reacting out of frustration.” Because that’s not the right motivation. That’s not the way God has called us to react. He doesn’t say react out of anger, but He wants us to see the motivation, to know that this relationship needs to hear the truth, not just because the truth is necessary but yet it’s because we care for them and we want the relationship to be healed.

So after we see these first two, we’ve acknowledged the pain, we’ve looked at our own motivation and if we know those two are right, then the third one is to speak the truth. Don’t water it down. If everything falls in line, if the pain has been acknowledged, the motivation is right, then the truth needs to be heard. Someone is going to know how much you care for them, even if it hurts at a moment, even if that conflict or when the other person comes to you and it stings a little bit, they’re going to know that you care for them enough to come to them when these motivations are right.

So when you approach conflict, when you’re trying to speak the truth in love, take these three into account. Acknowledge the pain, look at your motivation and then speak the truth. Jesus is a great example of this and we turn to the Gospel of John when we see He’s in a conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well. Jews and Samaritans don’t like each other and that’s probably putting it lightly. Jews and Samaritans hated each other and yet here is Jesus at the well speaking to this Samaritan woman. This is what He says in their conversation when He’s talking about getting a drink and He has nothing to draw from the well and so then He gets into this conversation about her husband, “And go call your husband and come back and then we can talk.” “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You’re right when you say you have no husband. The fact is you’ve had five husbands and the man you now have is not your husband. What you’ve said is quite true.” “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you’re a prophet. Our fathers worship on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” Do you see how this conflict is coming about? This woman knows her sin. Chances are the people in her village have already kind of pushed her to the side, made her an outcast. She’s had five husbands and the man she’s living with now is not her husband.

She’s been confronted with this before but with Jesus, now it’s a little bit different. The truth is now presented in a different way. Jesus offers her something. When He’s talking about the water, this is what He says, “To everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water dwelling up to eternal life.” Do you see how Jesus’ words are different from our words? When these people have spoken to her in the past, they’ve made her an outcast. They’ve shown the woman her sin, but they haven’t offered her anything in addition to it. They said, “Here’s the truth. You’re a woman who’s had five husbands. You deserve to be an outcast.” But Jesus comes to her with words of life, words of salvation, bringing her back in, giving her those words of salvation.

Those are the words we can speak. When we confront conflicts today, when we speak those words, speaking the truth in love, we know it’s not just our words but the words coming from God. We can offer them that lifeline, bringing them in and saying, “I want a healthy relationship. I care for you. And now I want to show you.”

That’s what I pray as we move forward here, when we start to think about conflict in your own life. And if you’re thinking about, “How is it I can speak the truth in love,” I pray that you listen to these words, that you start to hear it and say, “How is it that I can best share this news with them?” With truth and love. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2009 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church